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The spirit of loving protection for all things. One of the descriptive definitions of Aikido forwarded by O'Sensei. Thereafter to be contemplated by all who do the art.

Many have and many explanations have been given as to what he meant. Here I shall give mine and I will approach it from a perspective many may not have considered.

Ownership.

Colloquially you can look at youtube and see many videos of people being 'owned' and thus it takes on that clothing of violent or dominating humiliation. Once again just another form of winning and losing and fighting and not Aikido.

So let's look at owning and the psychology if you like of such. I'll start with relationships.

Many have been in or seen relationships where one acts like they own the other and many have empowered themselves by being independant and saying 'no one owns me' and so we see psychologically it can be a touchy thing this owning business.

Then we can look at owning things, toys as a kid, clothes, your house whatever. So people then mostly decide that you can own things but not people. Yet they own plants and animals as pets. Some even laugh when they realize their pet owns them. So we begin to see that ownership is a special albeit confusing thing at times.

Well I am going to say here and now that owning is a responsible thing. Owning is a necessary thing. You can and indeed should own all that you see, you should own your wife of husband, you should own yourself, you should own your job and you should own the world.

Ownership gets a bad rap because psychologically a person believes if they own then they can do with as they will. I call this not ownership but as long as I am communicating here I will call it irresponsible ownership. It's just insane domination dressed up as ownership.

To get this real and put it into perspective and at the same time now bring into this the concept of the thread lets look at owning a house or car as an example. If you take responsibility for that ownership which involves maintenance and repair, general upkeep, making sure it's all good then guess what happens? It then does the same for you. Thus you lovingly take care of the house or car, you are thus lovingly protecting it and in return it lovingly protects you. This is true ownership. Maybe I should mix things and call it "shin no ownership"

True ownership is the spirit of loving protection in action.

The rain-forests, the environment itself worldwide is suffering thus from irresponsible ownership. Owners who believe owning means they can do as they will. Owners who believe they can tell others what's best for them. This is not loving protection. This is not therefor Aikido. Fear knows not loving protection but only destruction, cleverness and war.

The spirit of loving protection can thus be seen as a great discipline, a budo of love, common sense.

The basic complimentary forces of yin and yang are goodness and love. They own and thus support each other. May that be the future too for mankind.